Transportation vehicles, for example, aircraft, trains, buses, recreation vehicle, boats and other similar vehicles use various computing devices for providing many functions, including conducting commercial transactions for goods/services, accessing and playing entertainment content and others. These devices include hardware (for example, servers, switches, network interface cards, storage adapters, storage devices and others) and software (for example, server applications, operating systems, firmware, management applications, application programming interface (APIs) and others).
Universal Serial Bus (USB) ports are commonly used for connecting peripheral devices using USB cables. USB is an industry standard that defines cables, connectors and communications protocols for a bus for connection, communication, and power supply between computers and various electronic devices. USB ports provide a connection for peripherals (including smart phones, video game consoles, PDAs, keyboards, pointing devices, digital cameras, printers, portable media players, disk drives and network adapters) to computing devices, both to communicate and to supply electric power.
USB ports may have security vulnerabilities and are often turned off in secured environments, for example, on an aircraft. In some instances, the USB ports on an aircraft are disabled for data transfer but may be used for charging devices. Continuous efforts are being made to securely and efficiently use USB ports in secured environments.